


Badgering the Lawyers

by Shrewreadings



Series: Badger-Verse [1]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Badgers, Gen, M/M, Original Character(s), Team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-26
Updated: 2012-11-26
Packaged: 2017-11-19 15:39:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/574889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shrewreadings/pseuds/Shrewreadings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All that’s unusual about the Tuesday is the badgers. Everything else is pretty normal for SHIELD.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Badgering the Lawyers

**Friday morning**  


"Some of you are new to this process, so let's try, just once, to do this by the regs." Phil Coulson made a note on his StarkPadd of those at the conference table who groaned. "It's SHIELD policy to begin all action debriefings by outlining what went right in a series of events." He reached for his water glass.  


A silence so awkward that it tipped over the arrangement of Danish and muffins at Barton's end of the table fell before Steve cleared his throat and said, "the hands-free headsets seem to no longer have the static issue they did two weeks ago."  


"Yeah, redesigning an entire circuitry system in the space of a 72 hour period will do that. You're welcome." Tony didn't look up from constructing a model suspension bridge from empty sugar packets while he continued, "the new engines on the Quinjet are improving its performance by 7.3%."  


"7.48%, actually," Bruce remarked.  


“Don’t be pedantic,” Tony said.  


"The new armor means that Medical didn't offer me IV drug abuse intervention flyers yesterday," Clint offered. "I'll admit that covering the arms was a good call."  


Coulson’s head came up at that. “Does that happen often?”  


“Uh, yeah,” Clint said, tugging up his sleeve and showing his forearm.  


Colson nodded, taking in the bruises on the inside of Clint's elbow. “Ah, I see.”  


Tony butted in, as usual. “Those look remarkably like track marks,” he said.  


Clint sighed. “It’s where the bowstring hits my arm sometimes. And why do you know so much about track marks?”  


Tony just smiled and went back to his bridge.  


"I've gotten the surface friction on the new disks to work for us." Natasha said.  


Phil scribbled 'plastique kinks worked out by N.R.,' and fixed his gaze on the newcomer. She continued to scribble on her legal pad, hair falling past her face apparently making her unaware of the attention. Colson cleared his throat. "Ms. Lakehurst?"  


"One second, Mr. Coulson," she replied, putting a box around 'query hands-free headset algorithm license fee w. Stark Ind. legal & IP,' and looked up. She ran a hand through her hair, pushing it back behind her ears and pulling it behind her shoulders. Her hand caught at the very end, and she brought it forward with an irritated jerk, frowned at the pen still in it, and carefully set the pen down on the table. "I was on time for my meeting with Capt. Rogers on Tuesday."  


"That's your positive?" Tony asked.  


"Have you seen my time sheets?" She retorted, one eyebrow raised. "I was even late for my birth. By nearly a month."  


"Ms. Lakehurst, we do actually try to conduct these proceedings with a modicum of seriousness." Steve was also taking his notes on paper. Phil's eyes were drawn to the contrast between Steve's copperplate and Caroline's mix of indecipherable English (he assumed) and serviceable, unadorned Cyrillic cursive.  


"I'm aware of that, Captain." She turned to the next page on her legal pad and picked her pen back up. Her hair was slipping forward and she shoved it back again with an irritated motion. "And I believe I asked you to call me Caroline." Clint flicked something across the table: a ponytail holder landed on her legal pad.  


"So, from your point of view…" Phil half-coaxed as Caroline glanced at Clint and took the elastic. She scribbled something on the pad that apparently Clint could see. He smiled a little and nodded in her direction.

"Our meeting Tuesday was, in fact, the only thing to go right in this FUBAR." She set her pen down again, twisted the part of her hair that kept falling forward and wrapped the elastic around it to hold it in place.  


Steve shifted in his seat, a little uncomfortable. As a general rule, Steve preferred to not question the knowledge of the people he worked with, however he also wasn't comfortable when barracks-room English showed up in conference rooms. "Are you certain that that's the phrase you want to use? It means…"  


"Fracked up beyond all recognition." She had picked her pen back up and returned her attention to her notes, and continued, aware that she sounded flippant, but she was pretty sure that she was going to be fired by the end of the day, so she focused on keeping good meeting notes for the next poor schmuck in the job (and on updating her vita in the margins). "Captain, you might want to consider the subject of our meeting Tuesday before you comment on whether or not I have an appropriate understanding of the slang of the military-industrial complex, particularly that which came into common use…"  


Bruce put his hands on the table in plain view and slowly folded them together finger by finger.  


Coulson interrupted. "All right, thank you, Ms. Lakehurst. Let's start on what went wrong."  


Caroline looked up. Her blue eyes narrowed, and her mouth twisted in chagrin. "Would prefer those in alphabetical or chronological order, Mr. Coulson?"

**Monday afternoon**

"Come in, Clint," Phil said, not looking up from the paperwork. He heard the step, but not the customary latch of the door closing. He looked up, brain automatically picking out details for later identification. Female, average height, fair-to-pasty complexion, brown hair, blue eyes, top-heavy build, charcoal pin-striped pants, untailored, untucked white shell: room to be hiding a weapon, but no sidearm. ID tag hanging from clip on waistband. He'd been part of her interview team. Sitting and talking to people had been one of the first things the dictators had allowed him to do when he was let out of Medical in late June.  


He finally placed her: legal. Lakeview? Lakehurst. Caroline. Admitted to the Federal bar, the New York bar. There was something else about her that had made up for her showing up late for her interview. "Sorry, I was expecting Agent Barton. Sit down, give me a second to finish this." He frowned: it just wasn't coming to his memory. It was one of the aftereffects of Loki's attack he had still not gotten used to, and that still frustrated him.  


"I gathered that," she replied in a soft alto, sitting down in the visitor's chair that was closer to the window. She turned her head sideways and watched him fill in forms close-printed in red ink for a moment, then asked, "Mr. Coulson, are you trying to battle a health insurance company on your own?"  


"Apparently they think recovery from being stabbed in the chest by an alien in the course of duty should not be included in their policy's physical therapy coverage." He set the pen down and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Sorry, not your problem. What can I do for you, Caroline?" He turned to the computer and cheated: typed her name into the HR database to jog his memory.  


She looked from the forms to Phil's face, started to say something, then stopped.  


"Ms. Lakehurst?" Phil really didn't want to make small talk. "What brings you here…"  


"Battling the insurance company actually is my problem."  


"You've been here less than a month; please tell me you haven't needed their services yet." The paperwork for the field teams' healthcare was bad enough. If the lawyers started needing emergency services in the first month of employment, they'd have to start seriously looking at the training system. The database spat out an answer: PhD student, European history, all but dissertation.  


"Sorry, I wasn't clear. Battling the insurance company that's denying you coverage for an incident that took place during the course of your job on your behalf is, actually, my problem. It sounds like breach of contract to me. Since Loki stabbed you while you were on duty, that makes this one legal's. I'll send up a HIPAA release and start working on it."  


"You're serious." He couldn't quite keep the surprise out of his voice: even Col. Fury blanched in the face of insurance claims.  


"Mr. Coulson, I'm a lawyer. This is a chance to make people do things they don't want to do. Of course I'm serious." Caroline's eyes twinkled a bit while she grinned. Phil could see her resisting the urge to lick her lips in anticipation.  


"Send me the form." Phil closed the HR database and tabbed to Firefox. "Now, what can I do for you? As grateful as I am, I'm pretty sure you didn't come all the way up here to offer to take this on." He passed his hand over the insurance forms.  


Caroline sat back in her chair, crossed her legs. "I came by to say thank you."  


"You sent me a thank-you note when you started at the beginning of the month. The card had an actual ink-blot by your signature, it was very 19th century."  


"That happens, the blott-y thing. Fountain pen." She took a deep breath. "I was hoping I could ask you for a favor."  


"Ask." Phil tapped at his computer keyboard and found her dissertation topic, and the explanation for her visit.  


"You know I'm working on a Ph.D."  


"In your copious spare time between being our newest lawyer and clearing our backlog of property claims from the Battle of Midtown. I'd heard."  


"Not newest anymore, actually. There's a new kid who hasn't even passed the Federal bar that started last Thursday."  


"Congratulations."  


"Thank you."  


"You want an interview with the Captain." She nodded. "US press coverage of the Finno-Russian Winter War in the US."  


"You did the reading. I'm flattered."  


"Actually, I Googled you. Two of the first 15 hits were about Lamaze classes in Lakehurst, NJ." He turned the screen to show her the results.  


She raised an eyebrow. "I'll add 'emotional scarring' to the threatening letter to Federal Blue Cross – Blue Shield."  


"Do. What's your schedule like?" He turned the screen back around to face him.  


"I'm tilting at windmills of health insurance this afternoon; tomorrow I go on-call for warrants during daily staff."  


"You're still doing the on-call business? I thought the new system sent it through the entire department until someone picked up."  


"We don't stay at our desks a lot. This way the teams in the field only need the one number for when they need search and seizure warrants."  


"And switching it around?"  


"We change the auto-forward at 10 in daily staff."  


"All fifteen of you in one space? Is that a good idea?"  


"I'm assured by the physics department that congregations of lawyers don't hit critical mass until you have two dozen."  


"Not why I was asking, actually." Coulson scribbled a note. Putting all of SHIELD's legal staff in one small, confined space, daily, on a regular schedule made all his Men in Black instincts scream 'bad plan!'  


"Ah. Anyway, I'm off the warrant pager and back to windmill tilting Wednesday. Seriously,” she said at his look. “Actual windmills. We're sending a cease and desist order to a threatening wind turbine off Plum Island."  


Phil tabbed over to the schedule for the Avengers, and filtered for Steve. "He is actually free at 8 tomorrow. Will you be able to make it then?"  


"Of course."  


Phil looked past the computer screen and raised his eyebrow. "Really."  


Caroline sighed. "Yes. I know. I'm the only person who's been late for meetings with both Deputy Director Hill and Col. Fury in the same day and lived to tell the tale. I assure you, I can actually get to a meeting on time. Besides, it's more than just the dissertation."  


"Oh?"  


"If I don't get the Captain’s signature on his demobilization paperwork before the end of the month, the Army will have to cut him a paycheck for April that would buy an F-14."  


"Really?"  


She thought for a moment. "Well, half an F-14. 70 years at grade…"  


"That would add up, yes." Phil entered the appointment. "8 AM, your office." She raised her eyebrows back at Phil. "He still doesn't have one. Says it'd be a waste of valuable resources, and that he's fine with a desk in the bullpen."  


"That figures." Caroline snagged a Post-It and pen from Phil's desk and wrote the appointment down.  


"You realize he cared more about the New York Rangers than Finns fighting off Soviet aggressors in the winter of 1939?"

Caroline shrugged and set the pen back. "From my research, it's entirely possible that the same could have been said about the Finns." She stood up. "I'll get you that form. May I?" She gestured at Phil's file of insurance correspondence.  


"Certainly."  


She picked it up. "Thank you, Mr. Coulson."  


"Thank you, Ms. Lakehurst."

**Friday morning**

Caroline picked up an accordion file and pulled a stack of paper an inch thick. It had an alphabetized, tabulated index. "The auto-forward for warrant requests started directing to my mobile at 9:20. Tom MacLaurin was still on, in the office, and actually available; the server that covers legal switched the number over before going down for regular maintenance." She looked at Tony. "Which we didn't get notified about."  


"Don't look at me – SHIELD turned down Stark Industries’ bid for the IT management contract. Stark IT people know that they get thrown on the mercy of Pepper if they don't notify before switching over to backups."  


"Ah. Backups. All the Stark Industry divisions get them?"  


"Of course. Duplication of storage is…" Tony looked at Coulson. "You don't have backup servers for your lawyers? Are you a masochist or just suicidal?"  


"Not in the budget."  


"Make room." Natasha suggested. "Try Marketing: they've usually got some flexibility."  


"They also have a backup in case we get an urgent request for a signed photograph while their main server is down for maintenance." Clint said.  


Phil looked at Clint. "Do I want to know how you now that?"  


"Probably not."  


"Good. So. Legal's server was down."  


"Which meant relying on the SMS system to get the information from Agent Byrnes when he called in from Nebraska to ask why we hadn't moved on his warrant request."  


"SMS?" Steve whispered to Bruce.  


"Texts. The written messages on the phone?"  


"Thanks."  


"Agent Byrnes had to text you?" Clint asked.  


"Just forward the e-mail he’d already sent, really. And was already at the location he needed the warrant for. With the subjects of the warrant inside the location. Well, inside, around and under, actually."  


"So we need to remind field agents to call legal before they arrive on scene."  


"Oh, no, the field agents' protocol is fine." Caroline said. "Agent Byrnes had been trying to call since 9 AM Eastern. It took 25 minutes for him to get through."  


"Do we know why there was a delay yet?" Phil asked.  


"Tom MacLaurin's making inquiries."  


"How intense has he gotten?"  


Caroline pulled the interrogation transcripts from the section labeled 'I,' and glanced at the box indicating strong the inquisition had gotten. "So far, he's just at French."  


"Remind him we no longer approve Spanish."  


"I think he's only trained to [West Midlands."](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Midlands_Serious_Crime_Squad)  


Phil nodded and scribbled 'mental health intervention team for IT.' "Right. So, the warrant request is made by Agent Byrnes at 9:25."

**Tuesday morning**

"I'm sorry I couldn't be of more help." Steve said, as they left Caroline's office, she turned for legal's conference room (shown on the SHIELD blueprints as the kitchenette), he for the fire stairs.  


"Not at all, Captain. You gave me several new lines to look at and saved the Army 12 grand. I'd call that a good morning's work." The phone clipped on her hip rang. "And apparently mine calls. Thanks again." She unclipped the phone and answered, "This is Caroline Lakehurst." She glanced at her watch, frowned, and went back into her office, logged back on to the computer. "Yes, I'm on the warrant pager, Agent Byrnes. How long?" The keystrokes started sounding louder, clear to Steve all the way down the hall.  


The next word, however, is what caught his attention: he hadn't heard it spoken out loud since 1943. "BOHICA. Right. Agent Byrnes, I need you to re-send all that, this time as an SMS e-mail to this number."  


"That's not protocol." Steve heard, more faintly, over the phone. He was pretty sure he could hear safeties being disengaged, too, but that was usually iffy over a long distance mobile.  


"Yeah, well, neither is locking legal out of our e-mail. You can re-send to this number or you can lose everything the same way we did the Foster material?"  


There was hesitation at the other end of the line. "I'll re-send. I'll have to hang up."  


"Understood. I'll call back as soon as I've got the data."

**Friday**

"Legal follows grade 6 security protocols, so we can't synch data through a USB: any new material has to go through the remote server. Which, as mentioned…"  


"Was down. So how did you get the request entered?"  


"The old fashioned way, Mr. Coulson. I typed. Then I printed. Then I hit the fax machine."

**Tuesday**

"Judge Cruse's chambers."  


"Hi, Annie, it's Caroline over at SHIELD."  


"Hey, Caroline. I'm sorry, the Judge is on the bench right now."  


"Interrupt her."  


"Sorry?"  


"Check your fax machine. I needed Her Honor's signature…" Caroline looked at her watch. "Ten minutes ago."  


"Caroline, I'm not risking my clerkship for a search and seizure warrant for E.T."  


"Fine. Shall I attach your name to the condolence card, or will you be sending your own?"  


"Caroline…"  


"Annie, I have agents on the ground, taking fire while you're dithering. Get. The. Judge."

**Friday**

"Taking fire?" Steve asked.  


"At the end of the data confirmation call, Agent Byrnes and his team were definitely taking fire."

**Tuesday**

Caroline punched the agent's number into her desktop phone and put it on speaker. "Byrnes."  


"Agent Byrnes, it's Caroline Lakehurst in legal. I have your data and the warrant request is in. You are authorized to prevent removal of evidence and to detain suspects and witnesses: you are not, I repeat not, authorized to search premises, computers, or persons, nor are you yet authorized to arrest. Do you understand?"  


"I do, Ms. Lakehurst. Thanks." The distinctive noise of gunfire being exchanged echoed through the office before the call ended.

**Friday ******

"That's when the 10-13 alert for 'agents under fire,' went out." Natasha said. Caroline nodded. "From your office." She nodded again. "At 9:38. Which is when you called Judge Cruse's chambers?"  


"Before."  


"You called Judge Cruse's chambers after hitting the 10-13 alarm?" Phil looked at the call log.  


"Yes."  


"To make sure the warrant got issued."  


"Yes."  


Natasha leaned forward. "Why?"  


"Pardon?"  


"You weren't briefed on the protocol for issuing the 10-13. So why did you hit the alarm?"  


"I didn't, actually."  


Natasha slid the call log across the table, the relevant alert highlighted. Caroline turned towards Phil. "Mr. Coulson, I realize that I'm FNG in this agency, but if you're going to fire me for something I fouled up, I'd really like to know now so I can stop censoring myself."  


"That's the problem." Coulson said, "you didn't do anything wrong."  


Clint pushed his chair back, kicked his heels up on the table. Coulson knocked them back off without looking in Clint's direction. "You did exactly what you should have done. What any of us would have done. Which would be fine if you'd been briefed on procedure…"  


"Which you would have been on Monday," Coulson said, looking at Caroline's file.  


"But you weren't. Which begs the question…"  


"Why were the phones working?" Tony asked, fidgeting with his phone.  


Clint's head turned sharply towards Tony. "What?"  


"They're VOIP. Legal's server was down. Why were legal's phones working?"  


"Separate servers." Natasha said.  


"Oddly, no." Tony said. He pushed an icon on the phone and screens of data projected up from the table. He ran his finger over a part of the diagram and it turned bright blue, showing the server location of legal's phones. "They're on the same. Which, major snaps to SHIELD for making sure you can keep phones up when someone who isn't me hacks you, but begs the question: why were legal's phones working when their servers were down??"  


Phil picked up the phone next to his seat and entered a number. "Mr. MacLaurin, this is Agent Coulson. You're authorized to go to [Birmingham."](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham) He hung up the phone. "Ms. Lakehurst, why did you hit the 10-13 alarm first?"  


Caroline stared at her legal pad. She was writing again, the same character over and over. "I didn't."  


"You didn't hit the 10-13 alarm?" Steve asked.  


"Not intentionally. I was a little busy puking into my wastepaper basket. It’s not every day I hear the man I think of as Agent Scrum-Half getting shot at. I grabbed the desk and hit the phone by accident." She looked at Clint. "They tell you 'you're going to be working somewhere that regularly gets invaded by DoomBots. The building has a beacon embedded in its helipad that tells invading aliens 'good eats here!' Deputy Director Hill's karaoke machine once became self-aware and refused to perform anything but Verdi for six weeks.'" She flushed. "The reality of the people whose interests I'm supposed to protect getting shot at – and my inability to do anything about it – made me pretty sick."  


"And yet you got it right." Natasha commented, making a note on her own StarkPadd  


"There's this really big red button on the phone with an 'alarm' icon on it. Pushing it? Really, not that hard. Even for a lawyer." She looked back at Natasha. "And yes, then I called the damn judge. Because, assuming that they weren't dead, the last damn thing that is going to happen on my watch is a seizure getting pitched on a fucking Fourth Amendment violation."  


"I thought you were censoring yourself." Coulson commented.  


"I was. But the phrase 'fracked up beyond all recognition' alone is going to make my godfather's ghost start haunting me from my hall closet again, so I think I'll stop now if it's all the same to you."  


Natasha nodded once, and looked back to her own tablet. "When was the warrant signed?"  


Caroline pulled the tab in the file labeled 'W.' "Time stamp on the signature is 9:42."  


"And it got back to us at…?" Phil asked  


Caroline tilted her head sideways to look at the fax data line timestamp. "Looks like 9:45."  


"And Agent Lema was hit at…?" Natasha asked.  


"8:40 AM Central." Clint answered, checking the report from Byrnes.  


"So, not in the execution of a lawful warrant." Phil said.  


"Correct." Caroline answered, restacking the papers.  


"Is there a reason you're using paper, Ms. Lakehurst?" Tony asked.  


"Yeah." She held up the legal pad. "Try hacking it without some physical contact in line of sight."  


"Right, so that concludes what went wrong here in the office. Will Byrnes and I are sitting down to discuss his end of Nebraska this afternoon. So." He turned to Steve. "Captain, what went wrong when you arrived on site?"  


"Well, I would have to say that it probably started with the badgers." Steve answered.

**Tuesday**

"How long have they been taking fire?" Steve asked as Tony closed the jet's gangplank.  


"At least 10 minutes. Belt in, we're cleared for five, we'll be there in 20." Clint said.  


"Five?" Steve asked Tony.  


"Mach five. About 4,000 miles per hour. Even I'm sitting for this one." Tony sat down and strapped into the five point harness. "Seriously, Cap, sit down. Strap in." He waited until Steve did so, then said, "Hit it, Clint."  
The jet cleared the hangar and shot vertical. The g-force compensator kicked in and they broke the sound barrier in about 20 seconds. Tony handed Steve a new hands-free earpiece. "Do we know what's going on down there?" He asked, activating his own.  


Steve slipped the earpiece on. "All I know is that there's a team on the ground in Nebraska that called legal asking for a warrant and started taking fire." He cued up a StarkMap of their destination.  


Coulson's voice broke into the comms. "Byrnes and his team were investigating a report of unusual badger behavior out of Dennison State College. Apparently they've started to solve problems."  


"College students solving problems instead of getting drunk and partying? Yeah, I'd say that's clearly a case for SHIELD…" Tony muttered, checking their weapons' status.  


"The badgers are solving the problems, Mr. Stark."  


"Okay, that's unusual, yeah."  


"Solving what kind of problems?" Natasha asked while Clint took them over the Appalachians and opened the throttle up over Ohio.  


"Dennison has unearthed an interconnected badger subway system. It has a spoke and hub arrangement of lines and the users can get anywhere in the county in ten minutes or less." Coulson answered.  


"I'm missing why this is a problem?" Steve asked.  


"Badgers max out at five minutes of 16 mph and they really shouldn't be waiting in line to enter the system during morning rush hour."  


"Dennison has a morning rush hour?" Natasha asked.  


"The two for one pancake special at Brittany's Diner ends at 9:30."  


"Are they not tipping well?" Tony ignored Steve's glare.  


"Agent Byrnes reported that they seem to favor the Burger King."  


"So how do we get brand specific, public transportation loving badgers in the high plains?" Tony asked, "Are we talking about alien interference, some kind of mutation from the water, something escaped from a lab or what?"  


"We'd ruled out the water: the city and college system tested clear. Those kids can barely find their way into a textbook. No way they’re building anything more complex than a hockey rink. Hang on, I've got to put you on hold." Coulson clicked his line to switch to the incoming call. "Coulson."  


"Mr. Coulson, this is Caroline Lakehurst. We have the warrant for Nebraska; search, seizure and arrest authorized for the identified subjects, objects and…" Coulson heard pages turning on the other end of the line "…badgers and other suspect fauna?"  


"Thank you, Ms. Lakehurst." Coulson switched back to the comm. "You're covered against _Foster v. US_."  


"And we just entered Nebraska." Clint reported. "On scene in two. Stark, you up?"  


Tony nodded at Steve and then stepped into the back of the jet to suit up. "Let's go play dachshund, and dig those fuckers out."

**Friday**

"Why didn't you call Agent Byrnes, Ms. Lakehurst?" Coulson asked.  


"I tried and got his voice mail. I looked at the phone tree; you were right above him, so…"  


"Are you allowed to make sense?" Tony asked, "I thought that was beaten out of you in the first year of law school."  


"You get your license for rationality back once you pass the bar."  


"Natasha, the badgers?" Coulson asked.  


"The badgers were not really the problem, per se," Natasha said thoughtfully. "More that their burrow subway system created sink-hole issues."  


"Which is how Agent Lema got shot," Clint added.  


"And why Dummy, Butterfingers, You, Jarvis and I are going to be spending the foreseeable future working on the stabilizers on the Quinjet." Tony added.

**Tuesday**

Natasha brought the Quinjet down between the grayish metal building standing alone in the field and the SHIELD SUV. Clint climbed up to the roof to get a look at the fields of fire while Tony covered the approach from the road.  


"Why do I smell pancakes?" Steve asked.  


"Jarvis, air quality analysis." Tony ordered, hovering 50 feet up.  


"The Captain is indeed correct; the sugar content of the ambient humidity is quite high, and it does appear to correspond to maple syrup. Also, the ammonia content is well above average for this time of year and place."  


"Meth lab." Natasha commented. Well, meth lab with syrup. What was the name of that diner again? Should we send some sort of health inspector?”  


"Looks like. Barton, Stark, got eyes on our men?"  


"Right where they're supposed to be," Barton reported. "Under cover, and mostly in body armor. Black SUV."  


"How refreshingly sensible of them." Tony muttered. "And oh, hey, the locals just hit the turnoff."  


"I've got 'em," Rogers called heading toward the driveway. "Someone get eyes on…" Shots rang out from the pole barn as the sirens came into earshot.  


"Stark, get me an opening." Barton requested. Tony answered with repulsor blasts and opened up the side of the barn. Clint sent two arrows loaded with flash-bangs: noise and smoke, but no sparks.  


"Whaddaya know, he actually _can_ hit the broad side of a barn." Rogers muttered, sliding into cover the SHIELD agents with the vibranium shield. "Agent Byrnes, have you got men down?"  


"Just Agent Lema." Will nodded his head toward the woman in the SUV.  


"Agent Lema?" Steve looked at the agent in the back seat of the SUV, her leg up on the back of the bench holding a bloody pressure bandage on it. He watched her breathing for a moment, waited for her to exhale, then put his hand over the bandage and pushed down, hard.  


She didn't so much inhale as swallow her lungs whole. "Fuck." Rogers didn't let up; Lema used the chance to apply a tourniquet just below her knee. "The Crankinsteins decided that opening fire was a good idea; I slipped on the syrup when we entered and couldn't get clear fast enough. Not enough friction."  


Rogers looked at Byrnes and asked "what exactly do the Crankinsteins want? Are they some kind of militant badger liberation front?" The sheriff's car shrieked to a stop by the SUV, passenger side facing the pole barn.  


"Nah, just ordinary capitalists cooking meth for fun and profit, using [stolen maple syrup](http://www.businessinsider.com/canadian-police-raid-facility-linked-to-30-million-maple-syrup-theft-2012-10) to make a candy base for their product. They set up shop next to the wrong field. The badgers' subway collapsed the ground under the syrup vat, it went everywhere, and well." Byrnes shrugged. "We smell like a Waffle House. The main burrow is a quarter mile that way." Byrnes pointed northwest. "We were waiting on local LEOs—"  


"Yeah, sorry we're late," the sheriff said. "The road collapsed over Tompkins Creek. Damned badgers."  


Byrnes continued, "–why do we rate you?"  


"Oh, you know. The NHL has locked out the players, so we thought we'd catch the next game against Bemidji State." Byrnes turned to look at Tony, who was still hovering 10 feet up, and raised an eyebrow. Tony continued quickly, "No SHIELD backup."  


Steve added, "Nearest team would be Chicago, but they're out on assignment. You came under fire while on the line with legal. They hit the alarm."  


"That was nice of them. Can we keep anything?"  


"All of it." Natasha answered on the comms. "Your warrant came through while we were en route."  


"Sweet. Can we get those idiots out of their pole barn now?"  


"Ask the man with the hat." Clint answered.  


Byrnes turned to Rogers. "Captain, can we…." Steve jerked his head at the sheriff, who nodded.  


"Go for it. The state troopers won't be here for another hour, and I think…"  


A resounding crack went across the field as part of the pole barn collapsed and the Quinjet dropped two feet. The syrup started to smell burnt.  


"That can't be good," Barton muttered. "Does syrup burn the same way…"  


"As sugar? Yeah, it does." The sheriff answered.  


Simultaneously Steve shouted, "everyone down!"

**Friday**

"And that was the point at which the meth lab actually exploded?" Coulson asked.  


Clint nodded. "Natasha saw the subjects head out the back and make for their car."  


"Which you disabled."  


"Yes."  


"With an explosive arrow tip?"  


"Nope, that was Agent Romanov."  


"I said I got the surface friction to work with us instead of against us. Pitched one at them overhand."  


"Into their…" Coulson looked at Caroline.  


Caroline pulled the 'C' tab and read, "1992 Jeep Grand Cherokee, candy apple red." She turned the page. "With a Carfax report that shows considerable time spent in the body shop, which makes their claim of 'major property damage' kind of moot."  


"And at that point arrests were made, samples taken, and Agent Lema evacuated back here and into surgery."  


"Correct." Steve answered.  


"Did the warrant cover manufacture of methamphetamines?" Natasha asked.  


"It did, as there's that convenient 'and any evidence of other illegal activities' clause in a Patriot Act Warrant like this one." Clint answered.  


"Good. So." Coulson looked at Bruce. "What's going on with the badgers, Dr. Banner?"

**Tuesday**

"I really don't know much about badgers, but is that thing supposed to be testing the crate so systematically?" Tony asked, looking at the badger tapping at the side of the high-strength isolation crate in Bruce's lab. "It divided the thing into quadrants about two seconds after it woke up and started tapping away."  


"Probably not," Bruce answered, "but then, speaking from experience, I can say it's kind of hard to resist the urge." He left the badger's crate alone and used the wall-mounted gloves to take a sample from the rye plants standing in their own case next to the beaver's badger’s. He prepared a sample for the centrifuge, slid it in, and hit 'start.' "Did I read correctly that these things built a subway system?"  


"Dropped the ground right out from under the jet." Tony tapped at a tablet screen to pull up the data for the most recent flight. "Not great engineering."  


"Well, it's beavers that do the building thing. I kinda doubt that they can just book cross-training time the way we do with Xavier." He moved on to the hair, nail and blood samples.  


Tony snorted and smiled. "Hey, what do we know? It could be an entire exchange species program."  


"The possibility is non-zero." Bruce answered. "Huh. Interesting."  


"Mmm?"  


"These nail samples. They've got a nice 'before' and 'after' stripe." Tony looked over. "Before," Bruce pointed to one side of the image of the slide, "and after. Down towards the cut, so newer."  


"They acquired a drug habit?"  


The centrifuge chirped. "Maybe. I'll know in a bit."

**Friday**

"So, what we've got is a population of genetically modified badgers that acquired their mutations after encountering the rye crop." Bruce said, tapping the projection on the whiteboard. "The crop was intended to be pest resistant - and it is - but the badgers in the area apparently find it slightly more addictive than crack."  


"And the population boom?" Coulson asked.  


"It apparently also works as a badger fertility drug."  


"Is that something we need to worry about?"  


"That depends on your point of view on badgers." Bruce answered.  


"How about the insect resistance?" Tony asked.  


"You'll probably want to have Pepper get the students' résumés. It's a pretty solid piece of genetic engineering, and I'm fairly sure they'll work out the side effects."  


"Or find a way to turn it into a feature. Not only insect resistant, but preps surrounding fields for next season's use." Clint added.  


"I'll suggest it to marketing." Tony said, draining his coffee cup. "Anything else?"  


Caroline half-raised her hand, then blushed and put it down when everyone turned to stare at her. "Sorry. Agent Lema?"  


"You can start battling Federal Blue Cross on her behalf in about a week." Coulson answered, smiling slightly.  


"The bullet grazed the bone and they've plated it." Natasha added, closing her tablet. "She'll be in PT for about three months, but back in the field within six."  


Caroline nodded and started to reassemble her paperwork. "Thanks."  


"And I think that about covers it." Coulson said. "You're done, unless they're the badgers are going to take over the building?"  


"Doubtful," Bruce answered, shutting down his projection. "They do not appear to have developed thumbs."  


"Yet." Caroline muttered darkly. She left the conference room just after Coulson, her files under her arm, and headed for the elevator to head back to Legal.  


"Plans for the weekend?" Coulson asked as they waited.  


"Pager tomorrow. Thought I'd try sleep on Sunday, but I'm torn between that and laundry."  


The elevator arrived and they both got on. "I've heard good things."  


"The REM periods come especially well recommended."  


"So does the spin cycle." Caroline got off the elevator, and Coulson continued. "I'll be in tomorrow. Come by while you're here."  


"Because…?" Caroline stuck her arm in the elevator door.  


"Because I told you to. Thank you, Ms. Lakehurst."  


"Thank you, Mr. Coulson."

**Author's Note:**

> Betaed by [Yin-Again](http://yin-again.livejournal.com/) and [Kellie](http://kelliem.livejournal.com/)


End file.
